Bunker Hill (21 page)

“That’s
not enough.”

“Sir,”
Gridley said, trying to contain his anger, “the facing wall of the redoubt is
thirty-eight feet long. In that space, eighteen men can use their muskets
efficiently. Eighteen others will take their places while they reload.”

“I’ll
thank you not to teach me tactics, Colonel Gridley,” placing the accent on the
word “Colonel.”

“Then will
you teach me tactics, General,” Gridley snapped. “Give me a lesson in your
tactics, and General Ward’s tactics. We’re on this cursed hill facing the whole
British army with a few hundred men and boys while a whole fuckin’ army of
twelve thousand sit on their asses in Roxbury and Dorchester!”

“Oh, hold
on, Richard,” Warren said. “We can’t fight among ourselves. Israel was all for
more men. It’s Ward who denied us the reinforcements.”

“Ward and
the damn Committee of Safety,” Prescott said.

Silence
for a few moments while the four men faced each other. Then, from Putnam: “I’ll
try to forget what you said, Colonel.”

“I don’t
give a shit whether you forget it or not,” Gridley replied. He dropped his
voice, went close to Putnam, who still sat on his horse, and, speaking with
hardly controlled rage, said, “As sure as
there’s
a
God in heaven, if I live through this day, I’ll have satisfaction for this. We
have been betrayed, sir, and you know that as well as I do. The men in this
redoubt and behind that barricade are ready to lay down their lives and you
come here and sneer at us!”

“I am not
sneering,” Putnam hissed. “Control yourself, Richard. I pleaded for more men.
Give me that.”

Warren
took Gridley’s arm and drew him away, whispering, “Please, Richard, let the old
man be.”

His face
set in
anger,
Putnam turned his horse as if to ride
away and then pulled back on his reins. “Colonel Prescott?”

“Yes, sir.”

Putnam
pointed to a pile of spades and pickaxes. “What are you doing with those
tools?”

“Nothing,”
Prescott said shortly.

“What do you
mean,
nothing?”

“I mean nothing. We used them, and there they are.”

“You mean to let them fall into the hands of the
British?”

“If it comes to that.”

“Those
tools belong to the Committee of Safety. They must be returned to the army before
hostilities begin.”

Prescott
stared at Putnam in disbelief. It appeared to Feversham that Prescott would
literally spring at Putnam and tear him from his saddle. Somehow the big man
controlled himself. He spoke slowly and evenly. “I am in command of these men
and of this defense. My duty is to my country, not to a pile of rusty tools. If
you want them, sir, take them with you. I don’t give a damn.”

It was
like a dream, Feversham felt, both improbable and unbelievable.

“There are
at least a hundred spades and axes in that pile,” Putnam said. “They are an
invaluable asset to the defense of our army around Boston. I want you to assign
a company of men to carry them away. This is an order.”

“You can
go to hell, General,” Prescott said calmly.

Feversham
watched Putnam ride off.

“I don’t
believe it,” Prescott said to Feversham. “Tell me, Doctor, did you hear what I
heard?”

Feversham
nodded hopelessly.

“The man’s
under a terrible strain,” Warren said to Prescott. “Give him that. We all are.
He has tremendous respect for you, believe me. When this command was given to
you, he was your most firm advocate.”

After a
moment of silence, Prescott said, “What time is it, Dr. Warren?”

Warren
took his watch out of his waistcoat pocket. It was a large gold pocket watch
with a caduceus bas-relief on its cover. He snapped it open.
“Two
o’clock, Colonel.”

Prescott
said to Feversham, “A very good estimate, Dr. Feversham. I think, now, the
gates of hell are about to open.”

N
o more than fifteen minutes after he had ridden away
in a fury, Gen. Israel Putnam returned on foot, leading a motley crowd of some
fifty men. He was carrying a musket, and he stalked up to Prescott and said,
“Colonel Prescott, I am here to offer my service as a soldier in your ranks. I
found these men in retreat, and I turned them around.”

Open-mouthed,
Prescott was without words. Then he offered his hand, and Putnam took it, and
for a moment, the two men faced each other, hands locked. Then Prescott took a
long breath and said, “I thank you, sir.” He pointed along the ridge to where
Knowlton’s men were still piling rocks for their defense. “Take your men, sir,
and join Major Knowlton. His line is too thin, and he’ll be happy to receive
you.”

“What are
my orders?” Putnam asked, making a final obeisance.

“To stop the British.”

Putnam
nodded, waved at his men, and yelled, “Follow me!”

Gridley
and Warren leaped out of the redoubt. “What was that all about?”

Prescott
told them, adding that if he had not seen it with his own
eyes,
he would not have believed it. “Thank God,” Gridley said. “He’s a wild old
devil, but I’d rather have him with me than a dozen men. We were together in
the French war with Rogers Rangers.”

“Colonel!”
Feversham
called from the parapet. “They’re ranking up. I think it’s the beginning.”

Prescott
joined him and took the spyglass. “So they are. So they are.”

A young
man, his armband marking him as an officer, came running up from Knowlton’s
position. “What’s the word, sir?”

“It’s
close. Every man is to keep his head down. Let the officers watch it coming. I
want heads down.”

For the past half hour, the
guns of the fleet had been silent. Now, from the water’s edge, came the sound
of drums, and then on top of that, a roar of cannons. All along the half mile
of the American defenses, cannonballs thudded into the ground, sending up
showers of dirt that fell like dry rain on the crouching men.

“Why did
the cannons stop?” Prudence asked Lieutenant Threadberry. “How do they expect
to drive those dreadful people out of Charlestown if they don’t shoot at them?”

“Ah, now,
ma’am, I expect it was to let the guns cool and give the gunners a bit of a
rest. You’ll soon hear enough of a thunder to make us deaf. Don’t forget, the
gun crews have been at it since early this morning. They want a spell of rest
and a drink of water. It’s hot here, but in the gun decks, it’s just as hot as
hell, if you will forgive the expression.”

“They’re
going to attack now, are they not?” Mrs. Loring asked.

“Oh, soon
enough, you may be sure. See how the general has put his men into parade
position. It’s a great army we’re looking at. Starting there on the left, you
have the marines, and then the light infantry, and right there in the center
Sir William’s grenadiers, with their great bearskin shakos. Just the sight of
them will make a brave man shudder.”

“Will
General Howe lead them?” Mrs. Loring wondered.

“You can be sure of that. They’re his own.”

“And won’t
that place him in awful jeopardy?”

“He won’t
be thinking of that.” The lieutenant ventured to lay his hand on hers,
reassuringly. “You’re not to think of harm coming to him, Mrs. Loring. My own
thought is that they will cut and run before he’s ever in musket range. Ah,
see—” He pointed down the deck to where Captain Woodly had appeared. “It’s a
high moment, and the captain has come on deck to watch.”

All the
rest of the crew were at the rail, their eyes fixed on the army drawn up at the
foot of Breed’s Hill. Both midshipmen had scrambled up the rigging, the better
to see the drama that was to unfold before their eyes.

“When will
it begin?” Prudence asked nervously. “Are we in any danger here?”

“Bless
you, ma’am, here on this ship you’re as safe as if you were at home in bed.”

“I’m
frightened.”

“Nothing
to be frightened of, nothing at all.”
He stroked Mrs. Hallsbury’s arm reassuringly. “You’re square in the center of
the British navy.
Safest place in the world.
Not that
I wouldn’t give a pretty penny to be a part of this great encounter. But my
place is here.”

On Copp’s
Hill, General Clinton and General Burgoyne stood with the battery of mortars,
watching the iron fireballs glow red hot as the gunners pumped the bellows. Sir
Henry Clinton sighed and admitted that the Americans had not surrendered.

“I hardly
expected them to do so,” Burgoyne said.

“Give me your glass,” Clinton said. “Somerset is
signaling.”

Burgoyne handed him a spyglass. “What do you make?”

“Commence
firing.”

“Commence
firing,” Burgoyne relayed the command to the gun crew.

“So we
burn a village,” Clinton said softly. “Where every prospect pleases and only
man is vile.”

The
gunners packed the mortars with bags of gunpowder. Then they lifted the red-hot
iron balls with tongs. No fuse or trigger was necessary. When the hot
cannonballs touched the gunpowder, the mortars fired, and the flaming iron
balls arched over the river into Charlestown. The effect was immediate. Where
the fireballs crashed into the tinder-dry roof shingles, the resulting fire was
almost instantaneous. Within minutes, a dozen houses were in flames. On the
rooftops of Boston, hundreds of men, women, and children watched the act of
pitiless destruction. Some of them cheered. Others, whose hearts were with the
Americans, who had relatives and friends who had once lived in Charlestown,
wept or cursed the British.

On Breed’s
Hill, the militiamen peered through the cracks and crevices in their
fortifications and cursed impotently. Standing on the barricade, Feversham and
Prescott and Warren watched in bitter silence, and Warren asked Feversham,
“Why? Why? You’re an Englishman, Feversham. Tell me why?”

Coldly and
thoughtfully, Prescott said, “It makes sense only if they considered that the
smoke would cover them.”

“When all the rest is senseless.”
Warren sighed.

That had
also been in General Howe’s mind, and his grand plan for the burning of the
village, as he said afterward, was that the pall of smoke would cover their
advance. But even as the fireballs began to fall, the wind shifted, and the
thickening column of smoke drifted over the Charles River and away from the
redoubt.

“There’s a
stinking piece of luck,” Sir William said to General Pigot, and Pigot laughed,
then shrugged and observed that wind was an uneasy ally.

“We’re all
in good order and ready,” Pigot told Howe. Pigot commanded the light infantry
and the marines, all of them drawn up rank upon rank in the tall grass of the
fields that stretched from Morton’s Point to the edge of the burning
Charlestown village.
“But damned if I see anything up there
to oppose us.”
He trained his spyglass on the hill.

“Who are
those three men standing there?”

“One of
them, I think, is Prescott.
The big man.
Shall we be
advancing, sir?”

Major
Wilkens of the marines joined them. “If I may offer an opinion, sir,” he said
to Howe, “I think we should go at them. My men are hot for it.”

“All in
due time, young fellow,” Sir William agreed. “I’ll have a word with the drummer
boys. I lost my whistle somewhere. Can you spare your whistle, Wilkens?”

“Gladly, General.
Where
you go, we follow. I don’t expect to whistle a retreat.”

There were
twenty-two drummer boys ranged in front of the waiting ranks of men. It was in
the tradition of the British army that the drummers should be young and in
their teens. Sir William had gone to the trouble of memorizing the names of
half a dozen of them, holding that nothing a leader could do pleased their
troops more than the ability to single them out with their family names. Sir
William was good at names, and now he reviewed his men and named the drummer
boys.
“Haskins.
Stout heart?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Smith?”

Smith, skinny, fourteen years old, saluted sharply.

“Kermit?”

“Ready, sir.
Very ready.”
He had long, straw-colored hair gathered in a
ponytail.

“Jackson?”

It was
good for the morale of the men to see their commander aware of and interested
in the drummer boys. As he went down the line, the men broke into cheers, a great
shout that echoed over the cannonading.

On Breed’s
Hill, the militiamen listened to the cheers in sullen silence, and Gridley
observed to Warren, “It’s their worst mistake, burning the town. The men are
raging. Whatever they felt before, now it’s pure and simple hatred.”

A
gray-haired man on the firing step of the redoubt said to Gridley, “I lived
there. I’m watching my house burn. I built the house with my papa. It took six
years. I grew up building it.”

Standing
with Knowlton behind the stone wall that sheltered Knowlton’s Connecticut
riflemen, Putnam roared, “For every damn house, you will burn in hell!”

Still standing on the
parapet with Feversham, Prescott remarked on the growling anger of his men.
“The damn fools to burn the town and give me a gift of it. They give us what we
need: hate and the will to fight. I don’t think any of them will run away now.”

At 2:15
p.m., on the seventeenth of June, Gen. Sir William Howe gave the final orders
for the advance to his staff officers. He stood in front of his grenadiers,
surrounded by eight men, and he pointedly reviewed the maneuver they had
discussed on and off for the past hour. “General Pigot,” he said, “you will
take the Fifty-second, the Forty-seventh, the Fifth, the Thirty-eighth, and the
Forty-third of the light infantry and go against the redoubt. You will destroy
it frontily and enfilade both sides. Major Atkins, you will lead the rest of
the light infantry around the right flank, and when you have taken whatever
defense they have there, you will continue to advance against Bunker Hill,
occupy it, and fortify your position. Major Wilkens, you will support General
Pigot’s left flank, circle the redoubt, and continue with your marines down the
road to the Charlestown Neck, according to our maps a distance of about a mile.
You will take a position at the neck and prevent a retreat of the colonials.

“I shall
advance against the center with my grenadiers and continue to advance until we
have taken the high ground at Bunker Hill. Then I will join you with my
grenadiers at the Charlestown Neck. We are not certain of how much effort they
will give to the defense of Breed’s Hill, but it should not be troublesome. I
calculate that in two hours we shall be in total possession of the peninsula.
Tell off parties for the prisoners. Any man who hesitates or retreats without
orders faces death on the field. Now go to your regiments, gentlemen, and God
be with you.”

At a half
hour past two o’clock, Gen. William Howe blew three short notes on the whistle
he had borrowed from Major Wilkens, as a signal to the drummer boys, and they
began to beat the alert. With a calm precision that caused Sir William’s heart
to swell with pleasure, the various regiments marched off and took their battle
positions in a line that stretched from Morton’s Point almost to the herb
gardens of burning Charlestown. The Connecticut riflemen who had been concealed
in the Charlestown houses had fled as the first firebombs fell. The marines on
the extreme left were now in no danger from hidden snipers. Sir William, at the
head of his grenadiers, raised his arm and let it
fall,
and the drums changed their tempo into the quick chatter of the advance. The
long line of troops, twenty-three hundred British regulars, in their bright
uniforms, knapsacks of food, and water and blankets on their backs— for this
was a commitment to take and hold a position—marched forward to Breed’s Hill.

Feversham’s
memory of the battle was like a patchwork quilt. The last volley of cannon fire
from the warships made a lucky hit on one of Prescott’s militiamen who would
not keep his head down, searing his arm and almost ripping it from his body.
Feversham applied a tourniquet, sutured the wound as best he could, bound it,
and gave the man a mouthful of rum. He was aware that the cannonading had
stopped. He stood up to see the long British line, a third of a mile in length,
advancing up the hill, the young drummers leading the way with their rolling
rhythm.

In the
redoubt, the Americans knelt on the firing step, their muskets ready. Prescott
loped back and forth along the line of trenches and breastworks, telling his
men to hold their fire. He kept repeating it, although it was plain that the
British were well out of musket range; indeed, out of rifle range as well. In
the center, where Howe led his grenadiers, there were a number of small farm
holdings, each with a stone wall. The grenadiers had to climb the walls and
re-form. Prescott watched this slow progress with amazement. In each instance,
the marines and the light infantry halted and waited for the grenadiers to form
a parade line once again.